Thinking Outside of The Box is Great but What Are You Shipping Today.
Creativity cannot be used as a means to an end. Creativity cannot be scheduled, handcuffed and taught, but at the same time you can’t wait for the little muse to land on your shoulder and guide you to write a perfect title of your upcoming article.
Creativity cannot be used as a shield for the delay. You were scheduled to publish something last week and you are still not happy with the creative stuff. You kept adding and removing something all the way.
Perfection is a trap for the creative mind. Keep it away. When lack of creativity worries you, creativity becomes a trap. Keep it away.
Instead of endlessly working on your product till it becomes perfect and super-creative for the market, you could ship it when it is just good (not so great) and let it evolve. This strategy is much better than having shipped nothing at all.
Too Many “What Ifs”
“What ifs” is your biggest enemy and keeps you busy working even if you think everything is fine.
What if
- Nobody likes you blog
- People understand it differently
- I receive only negative comments
Real depression sets in when you think too much about the outcome that you can’t control. It is a vicious cycle of perfection, anxiety and depression. You need to break this cycle. Keep a schedule and stick to it.
Your first attempt might not be so great, but it will be infinitely better than nothing.
If you are having writer’s block — kill it with role based writing approach; totally fun when you become Madman, Architect, Carpenter & Judge and you come out with a great article.
Creativity is Subjective
What is creative for you might not be creative for your readers/users. If your customers are asking for some new features next month, if your readers are expecting a new article on a specific topic because you raised some curiosity about it in your last article. You need to consider their expectations and curiosity, work on a schedule, and ship it on time. Perfect or no-perfect. Let your readers come back on that.
You can’t measure creativity as it is ever-evolving. So use it wisely but do not depend on it.
Get in touch with the value of what you are creating.
Let your desire to be perfect go away, be smart and go for good enough
Minimum Viable Product
If you are a writer and blogger you have some readers. You know what they expect. Write and share with them when it is ready and seek active feedback. Once you have more insights into what they value then you improvise and then you transform.
Similarly, if you are a programmer, coach, short-story writer, an artist or a freelancer — focus on immediate problems, release the first version, seek feedback and then add more features.
Solve your users’ core problems and later add new features and functionalities because feedback keeps coming. Once you have analyzed the responses, validated what worked and what did not; you could scale your idea, target more user base, add more channels and go to bigger markets
Be Agile
Make rapid progress. Write it, edit/review it, and publish it as quickly as you can. There are people out there waiting for your articles. They need it now.
If you have setup a process that make you use tools to writes, some other program to edit and validate, and then some other process to publish. Such complex cycles will slow you down.
Be agile, prepare all need research materials, use simple methods and tools to write and review, and hit the publish button.
Make your environment less complex, remove communication barriers between you and your readers, do what is more useful in a fixed deadline — rather than following a sequential long process.
Discover exactly who your readers are and how you can adjust your writing to meet their needs even more.
Instead of becoming geniusly creative turn yourself into inspired and original thinker that may require necessary madness, but totally worth it.
Think small and act big by developing a craftsman mindset. Don’t throw away your talent — rather play at a level that is appropriately challenging. Become so good that they can’t ignore you.
To wrap it up, worthiness of your content will be judged by your readers and this is where you should focus most of your attention.
